GE Healthcare sponsors LightSpeed VCT trials for coronary artery disease

By Elaine Rigoli

Tampa, Fla., March 13 - GE Healthcare said it is sponsoring the first in a series of multi-center, multi-patient trials to further validate the clinical efficacy of 64-slice computed tomography (CT) as a method for the diagnosis and treatment planning of cardiovascular disease.

This multi-center trial involving the company's LightSpeed VCT system provides non-invasive, lower-cost diagnostic capabilities to combat the No. 1 killer of American men and women, according to a company news release.

Cardiac catheterization, the current gold standard for diagnosing coronary artery disease, is an invasive and costly procedure that can impose unnecessary stress to patients, the release said.

The intent of these multi-center, multi-patient trials is to determine what role VCT can play in minimizing non-interventional catheterization as well as how VCT can be used to improve early diagnoses.

Unlike previous clinical studies comparing multi-slice CT with diagnostic cardiac catheterization, GE Healthcare said it will not only seek to clinically validate the use of CT for non-invasive diagnosis, but will also examine patient results and analyze changes in the cardiologist's decision-making process and patient management.

The latter are important indicators for determining whether using the LightSpeed VCT improves patient outcomes and treatment protocols, the release said.

"Based on my initial findings using the VCT, I strongly believe that cardiac CT angiography has the potential to dramatically change the way we practice clinical cardiology, at least in part by significantly reducing the number of patients who need to undergo an unnecessary invasive diagnostic catheterization procedure," James Min, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and one of the trial investigators, said in a statement.

Patient enrollment in this multi-center trial is now beginning. GE and its clinical trial partners expect to publish results in 2007.

Based in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $15 billion unit of General Electric Co.

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